Webster’s defines that as “government by the few,” and also as one “in which a small group exercises control ... for corrupt and selfish purposes.” There’s disturbing evidence to that effect — and it consists of more than just hunches and anecdotes.

A groundbreaking study published this spring in a journal of the American Political Science Association compared public opinion polls on nearly 2,000 policy issues with how events played out in Washington.

The findings:

• When the results favor what ordinary citizens want, it’s only because “those policies happen also to be preferred by the economically elite citizens who wield the actual influence.”

• When wealthy people and organized interest groups wish otherwise, “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy ... When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose.”

The study cites tax and trade restrictions as general examples. Some specifics come easily to mind: the trade agreements and tax loopholes that export jobs and taxable profits overseas.

The authors, professors Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern, didn’t apply any particular word to the system their statistics describe. But the only common word that fits is, indeed, oligarchy.

“In the United States,” they conclude, “our findings indicate, the majority does not rule ... If policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.”

Such oligarchies work their will through compliant politicians.

They bagged a bunch of them when they took over the North Carolina General Assembly in a low-turnout election four years ago. The consequences have fulfilled chief oligarch Art Pope’s nastiest wishes, such as enormous tax cuts for rich people like him, tax increases for nearly everyone else, rejection of Medicaid money to treat 400,000 people and create more than 20,000 jobs, fast-track fracking for the petrochemical lobbies, and the savaging of nearly every agency and regulation protecting the health of the people and the environment of North Carolina.

House Speaker Rep. Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, was up to his chin in every bit of it. It’s obvious why the national oligarchy wants him in Washington — and why that would be a tragedy.

The current campaign face of the oligarchy is that of Crossroads GPS, the secretly financed PAC run by the notorious Republican hit man Karl Rove. It’s bombarding North Carolina 24-7 with mailers, TV spots and incessant robocalls attacking Sen. Kay Hagan for having voted to consider cap-and-trade legislation.

Rove’s propaganda claims this “could” have cost North Carolina a certain number of jobs, but that’s based on highly suspect data supplied by the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Council for Capital Formation, two of the oligarchy’s most arrogant lobbies. And Rove conveniently overlooks the fact that Republican senators Lindsey Graham from neighboring South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona also supported the legislation as a preferable alternative to a straight tax on carbon emissions.

It doesn’t matter to the oligarchy that clean energy would generate net gains in employment or that failure to manage carbon emissions would surely cost trillions of dollars in harm to health and the environment. The oligarchs care for nothing but increasing their wealth, and they want it now.

But it does matter to the people. If our voices and opinions are ever to hold their own against the oligarchs in Washington, we need to send Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., back to the Senate and keep Thom Tillis out.

Martin A. Dyckman

Waynesville